Android architectures

[J. Landman Gay]

Thanks Ralph. I'm really looking forward to your utility because it 
looks like I'm going to need to build 4 apks. I phrased my question 
wrong, what I actually meant was "is it worth it to build for x86?"

I did some poking around and found that x86 devices (both 32 and 64 bit) 
comprise about 1% of the market, as of 2 years ago. Since Intel stopped 
supporting the chip it's probably less than that now, except for one 
thing: Chromebooks.

<https://stackoverflow.com/questions/33228158/android-architecture-usage>

<https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/186334/what-percentage-of-android-devices-runs-on-x86-architecture>

If you don't care about Chromebooks, it seems a bit of a waste to bother 
with the x86 builds, which will still run with an ARM build but slower. 
However in my case, I do need to support Chromebooks, many of which use 
an x86-something processor. So I guess I'll need to support all four.

I kind of like your option 4, but I guess uploading four times instead 
of two isn't that big a deal anyway.


On 9/21/19 10:20 PM, Ralph DiMola wrote:
> Long answer:
> 
> Option 1
> Build one big apk for all 4 architectures.
> 
> Option 2
> Build 4 apks (one for each architecture) you get these advantages over
> option 1:
> 1) The PlayStore will download the proper apk for the user's architecture
> thereby reducing the install/update time
> 2) You will target more devices because 1 large apk could exceed the max apk
> size for some devices.
> 3) x86 devices performance will be 5x to 10x faster.
> 
> Option 3
> Build 1 apk for both the arm and arm64 architectures to reduce the option 1
> apk size. App will run slow on x86 devices because it will run in an arm
> emulator. You could also possibly exceed the apk size for some devices but
> not as many as option 1
> 
> Option 4
> Build 2 apks one for each arm architecture to reduce the apk size and
> optimize the install time(as in option 2). App will run slow on x86 devices
> because it will run in an arm emulator.
> 
> Option 5
> Build 2 apks one for both arm architectures and one with both x86
> architectures. X86 devices will run fast. You could also possibly exceed the
> apk size for some devices but not as many as option 1.
>   
> Short answer:
> Yes. (option 4)
> 
> I'm working on my Android build plug-in to do the 4 builds with one
> operation. You will only have to enter the signing crap once for all 4
> builds. As soon as I get it done I will share it with the community.
> 
> Ralph DiMola
> IT Director
> Evergreen Information Services
> rdimola at evergreeninfo.net
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: use-livecode [mailto:use-livecode-bounces at lists.runrev.com] On Behalf
> Of J. Landman Gay via use-livecode
> Sent: Saturday, September 21, 2019 7:20 PM
> To: LiveCode Mailing List
> Cc: J. Landman Gay
> Subject: Android architectures
> 
> When submitting to the Play Store, is it really necessary to build four
> apks? Or can we get away with just the ARM two?
> 


-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com